


Coexist

by Coraniaid



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Season/Series 03, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29183256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coraniaid/pseuds/Coraniaid
Summary: Modified Season 3.The events of Season 2 went a little differently.  Angel still lost his soul, Buffy still sent Angelus to hell, but some people who could have died survived.  Some people who should have lived did not.Now Angel is gone.  He's not coming back.  And there's a new Slayer in town...
Relationships: Faith Lehane & Buffy Summers, Faith Lehane/Buffy Summers
Comments: 11
Kudos: 31





	1. Unbecoming

_Summer, 1998_

For such a small town, Sunnydale has always had too many cemeteries. And for someone so young, she's spent far too long in all of them.

This is actually one of the nicer ones. It doesn't house any ancient tombs dating back to before the town was founded. It doesn't have any secret tunnels underground, linking the crypts to musty passageways that lead down to subterranean vampire lairs. It just has graves. Just dead bodies, lying silently under the earth.

And at least she's visiting during daylight hours. No reason to worry about vampires or demons lurking in the shadows. That should make it easier.

(It doesn't. But it should.)

She's been back home for almost a week now. And she's spent most of that time putting off coming here: finding other urgent chores to do around the house, or spending time training or patrolling. She's even tried studying, for whatever good that will do her. School hasn't started up again yet, but senior year's going to be tough, between the slaying on the one hand and Principal Snyder on the other.

It was only when Willow started hinting that maybe she'd like to come out here with her and Ms. Calendar that she knew she had to stop stalling. Sure, Willow means well: she knows that the other girl has been learning a lot about magic from their former teacher in the last few weeks. But things between Buffy and Ms. Calendar are still all kinds of weird, and she's not sure she's ready to handle a conversation with her yet. Certainly not one about … this.

So she came here alone, almost like it wasn't something she'd been dreading. Just casually walked here from her house, strolling along the familiar suburban streets as if she made this trip every day. As if this didn't mark the end of something. As if she wasn't afraid of saying goodbye.

It should be raining, she thinks. The sky should be full of clouds.

But it's not. The sun is shining, the sky is clear and blue and she can hear birds singing quietly in the trees behind her. Sometimes the weather really has no sense of occasion.

"Hey, Giles," she says awkwardly. "It's been a while."

Giles doesn't say anything in reply, of course. He doesn't raise an eyebrow while he waits for her to finish, the way he normally would have done. Doesn't mutter something old-fashioned and British under his breath while he pretends to clean his glasses. Doesn't make that strange clucking sound with his tongue that he always did when he angry or upset.

He's never going to do any of that stuff again. Because of her. Because she let him down.

She's been a Slayer for less than three years and she's already failed two Watchers.

There's so much that she'd wanted to tell him; so much that she'd wished she had a chance to say to him or news that she wanted to pass on.

She'd wanted to tell him how they'd rescued Willow and Ms. Calendar from the abandoned factory where they'd been held hostage. Where they'd been tortured. They'd both needed to spend some time in the hospital, recovering from their more obvious injuries, but they were alive. They were safe. She thinks he'd have liked to know that Ms. Calendar was still doing okay.

She'd wanted to tell him how Spike had turned on Angelus, escaping out of town with Drusilla in tow. She hopes that letting the two vampires live isn't something she's going to regret. She's tried telling herself that she had no choice, that without Spike's help she wouldn't have had a chance to stop Acathla. But she's not convinced. And Giles was always better at telling comforting lies.

She'd wanted to tell him how she and Kendra had worked together to battle Angelus; how even with the two of them they'd almost been outfought. How she'd watched, helplessly, as Angelus broke the younger Slayer's neck. She wished she'd known how to get in touch with Kendra's Watcher, or with her family, to let them know what had happened. Giles would have known.

She'd wanted to tell him how she'd finally stopped him. How she'd slain the vampire, just like she was born to do, driving a sword through his chest to seal Acathla's portal to hell. A part of her had hoped, despite everything, that some remnant of Angel was still in there. Her Angel, not the demon. That she'd have a chance to say goodbye, before the end. But that hadn't happened. Of course it hadn't. That wasn't the way real life worked. It was thinking like that which had got Giles killed.

The vampire had died taunting her, her sword through his heart and a mocking sneer on his face.

And she'd even wanted to tell him how she'd been forced to tell her Mom the truth about being a Slayer; how afterwards she'd been afraid that she didn't have a home to go back to. That - after the fight with Angelus - she'd ended up running away rather than trying to find out.

(Not that she'd been gone for long. Her Dad had seemed put out when she arrived at his house in LA. He'd let her stay, made sure she was okay, but he'd looked increasingly uncomfortable for the few days she'd spent there, before she'd found the nerve to call her Mom and head back home. When she'd said goodbye he'd been a lot more distant than she'd remembered from her last visit a year earlier.)

Yes, she'd wanted to say a lot.

Now, though? It almost seems pointless. All of it. Or worse than pointless. It sounds like she's making excuses. Listing all the things she did as if they could ever make up for the thing she failed to do.

She carefully places the wreath she brought with her on the freshly weeded ground before the grave. She hopes he'd have liked the flowers. It wasn't something they'd ever discussed.

It should be raining, she thinks again. Things shouldn't be ending like this.

"I wanted to say that I'm sorry," she manages, voice trembling just a little. "I let you down. I let everyone down."

"I was distracted," she says, trying to think of how he'd have put it. "I was irresponsible." _I was in love_ , she thinks, and is surprised by how little it hurts.

She takes a breath to steady herself.

"It won't happen again," she promises.


	2. Lily

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who commented or left kudos on the first chapter. I've been messing around with the idea for this on and off for most of the last year, so I'm really glad to know that other people find the concept interesting. Hopefully I'll be able to do it justice.
> 
> I'm pretty bad when it comes to replying to things (or, honestly, when it comes to leaving comments on other people's work), but please don't take that to mean that comments aren't welcome; they're definitely appreciated.
> 
> I don't have a firm update schedule, but my goal is to post a new chapter every couple of weeks if I can.

> _In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer._

The Slayer Handbook is pretty clear on how many vampire slayers there should be. Diana's been making her study it, when she's not on patrol. Skimming through the stranger sections, puzzling over the vague prophecies and cryptic warnings. Trying to memorize the bits that seem important, or that just sound cool.

And there's only meant to be one. It says that much right at the top. Being the Slayer means being the Chosen One.

One girl in all the world against who knows how many vampires and demons. Kind of a lonely gig when you think about it like that. Sure, Faith is good at this, but there have to be tens of thousands of vamps out there. Maybe millions, for all she knows. An impossible number.

But that first line in the Handbook has never been true for Faith, has it? She's never been facing this all alone, whatever it's seemed like. Never been the only Slayer. And honestly, that's something Faith feels pretty good about.

It's kind of a relief to know that, however big and strange and terrible the world gets, there's somebody else like her out there. Someone else who understands what she's been through. It's like she has a secret ally, one she's never met. A friend.

(Faith spent a long time, before Diana, without one of those. It feels almost greedy, now, to dare to want to have two.)

* * *

The flight from Boston to LA takes over six hours.

Faith had never been been out to the West Coast before today. Never been more than a few miles from Boston, come to think of it. Never had much reason - or enough money - to really travel.

Something about her first sight of the Pacific unsettles her. All that empty ocean, fanning out into the distant horizon. If she stares at for it too long, she can start to imagine that all of California, spread out like a map below them, is about to slide into the sea. Or that the ground she's flying over is a mirage, not solid enough to support her weight when she tries to land. It makes her realise how small she is, compared to the wide world around her.

So she doesn't look at it; keeps her eyes away from the windows. Tries not to think about it even as the plane taxies down the runway at LAX. The world can do its best to make her feel small without her help.

She still isn't quite sure why she's here - why either of them are here. That's still getting some used to: being part of a 'we'. Being able to think of herself as part of something. Her and Diana. Slayer and Watcher.

If Faith learned anything back in Boston, it was that trust is generally a mistake. The sort of mistake that she'd stopped making years ago, even before she'd found out that the world was full of more monsters - more literal monsters - than she'd ever suspected. People smiled, and made pretty speeches, but only a child thought that that meant anything. Behind the smiles, everyone wants something from you. Everyone has an angle.

Diana is all right though. Diana has her back. There just aren't a lot of people Faith can say that about.

Diana had been there for Faith when she'd first been called. When she'd first realised what she was becoming. That was months ago now: back at the beginning of summer when her senses had suddenly started getting sharper and her punches had started getting stronger. It feels like longer. It feels like a lifetime ago.

Diana had been there when Faith had tangled with her first vampire. She'd taught her how to fight them; how to slay them. Warned her what else was out there, waiting in secret in the dark. Diana had believed in her when nobody else would have. When nobody else did.

That was why she'd let her Watcher talk her into coming out all this way, leaving Boston behind them. She doesn't know when they'll be back, if ever. Diana didn't seem too sure either. But never is fine with Faith. There isn't anything in Boston she's in any hurry to go back to.

Diana hadn't told her much about why they were here, only that they'd be driving out from LA to Sunnydale soon. Visiting an actual Hellmouth.

Faith guesses that means she'll finally be meeting the infamous Buffy Summers. She's trying to play it cool - doesn't want to be weird about it in front of Diana - but she knows how big a deal that is. _Into every generation a chosen one is born.._. Two living Slayers, meeting face to face? The Slayer Handbook doesn't have anything to cover that. They're just not supposed to exist together.

In all their training sessions, Diana hasn't talked about the previous Slayers much. That's not too surprising, Faith supposes, since they were pretty much all dead. Talking about them could easily turn depressing. From studying the Handbook, Faith knows a lot of them didn't make it very long. If they had done, Faith wouldn't have been here herself.

But Buffy Summers was different. She was still alive, for one thing. Faith isn't quite sure how that works - being dead isn't something you're meant to get better from - but she figures Diana will explain it to her if it ever turns out to matter.

And Diana's talked about Summers quite a bit. The way she describes it, in the last couple of years the older Slayer has tangled with more than her fair share of vamps. Not just the young, weak ones either, but several of the tougher old ones: the ones mean and long-lived enough to have been written about by previous Watchers.

(She means the ones tough enough to have killed previous Slayers. Diana doesn't spell it out, but Faith's not an idiot: if those old vamps are still alive and the slayers who fought them aren't, things can pretty much only have ended one way.)

The other Slayer hasn't limited herself to vampires either: Diana's mentioned her fighting magical assassins, burning down buildings, even blowing up a demon with a rocket launcher. The girl sounds pretty wild, honestly. Faith worries, sometimes, that that must make her the boring one.

 _Nah,_ she reassures herself _, Summers just has a head start, that's all_.

She wonders idly if Diana will ever let her try out a rocket launcher. That'd be fun.

* * *

It's going to be a while before they're ready to head out of the city. They won't be leaving until dawn. Time enough to do some patrolling, Faith figures. Slaying is what she was born for, after all. Sitting still for too long - whether trying to relax or trying to study, like Diana suggests - only makes her more restless. It's like an itch she can't quite scratch, a nagging sense that she needs to be doing something. She needs to be out there. She needs to fight.

The hotel staff seem worried about her leaving this late. There are lots of dangerous people out on the streets at night, they tell her, as if she didn't already know. As if she was just some tourist, who didn't know her way around a city. Faith just brushes the warnings off. No kidding there are all sorts of dangerous people out there; in LA just the same as Boston. But there's nothing out there that's more dangerous than her. She can take care of herself.

Still, it doesn't take long to realise that patrolling in an unfamiliar city isn't going to be easy. She doesn't even know where the closest cemetery to the hotel is. If she gets close enough to a vamp nest she'll be able to sense them, but in a place this big, with this many people … just wandering around aimlessly could take a while.

She's only a few blocks from the hotel and already starting to think about giving up when she hears something. A low growl that could have been a stray dog - but wasn't - followed by a scream.

Both noises came from the alleyway a block ahead. Faith sprints forwards, already feeling the familiar rush of adrenaline. It's getting hard to remember what life was like before this. (Not that she really wants to. She knows she doesn't miss it.)

She doesn't need her Slayer senses to know the jerk with yellow eyes and fangs is a vampire. He has a young girl pressed up against a wall, her eyes wide with fear. The girl's looking right at Faith, but she doesn't react at all to her arrival. Like she's given up already, just waiting for it to be over. And if the vamp heard her arrive, he doesn't seem to care. His attention is only on his intended victim.

 _Big mistake_.

Faith crosses the distance between them as fast as she can. Grabs the vamp by the back of the neck and hurls him away, where he goes cluttering into the garbage and junk that's strewn around the alley. He scrambles to his feet, spitting curses. She's got his attention now.

Faith doesn't waste time talking to vamps. Vampires might look like people - at least most of the time - but, like Diana always says, they aren't people. Not any more. They're demons, soulless. Monsters. They don't feel guilt or regret; she's not sure if they feel anything.

Sure, they can speak - Faith knows from experience that some of them love the sound of their own voice - but they only ever do so to try to distract you, to catch you off guard. They aren't interested in anything humans have to say.

So Faith doesn't say anything. She just matches eyes with the vampire and waits for him to try something. She can feel her heart beating faster; knows the vamp can feel it too.

Turns out this guy isn't much of a talker either.

He runs at her, fangs bared, moving faster than any human could ever react to. She isn't exactly any human though. There's a stake in her hand before he's crossed half the distance, and then the vamp is just dust settling on the ground.

The girl hasn't made a sound in all this time. She's just slid down to the floor, back still pressed up against the wall, eyes open wide and face streaked with tears. She's pretty, Faith thinks absently, in a kind of a pale and blonde and hopeless way. _Not exactly my type_. And she's been living on the streets for a while, if Faith is any judge.

Faith remembers what that was like. Maybe that's why - despite her better instincts - she steps forward and tries to talk to her.

"Hey," she says awkwardly. "You okay?"

The girl looks up, wiping some of the tears off her face with one hand and rubbing more dirt onto it in the process. But she still doesn't say anything. Faith guesses it had been a pretty stupid question. It didn't look like she'd been anything like okay for a long while.

"I'm Faith," she tries again, offering her a hand up.

"Lily," the girl answers, staring at the outstretched hand warily without taking it.

"Lots of dangerous people out here at night," says Faith, not realising she's echoing the warnings she was given earlier until it's too late to correct herself. "You got anywhere safe you can be?"

She'd expected the girl to shake her head, but she hadn't expected the stubborn look on her face that came with it.

"I can't give up now," Lily says. "I'm looking for somebody."

 _This is why you're meant to stick to the slaying,_ Faith reminds herself. She could deal with the vampires and demons fine; it was the aftermath that she always needed Diana's help to navigate.

People never just thanked you for saving them from the monsters: they always wanted more. They wanted you to reassure them that the world still made sense; lie to them that everything was going to be okay. Everyone had an angle, even when confronted with the impossible. Though come to think of it, Lily had seemed weirdly unsurprised by the fact that her attacker had just crumbled into ashes.

"My boyfriend," Lily continues. "Rickie. It's … he's missing. I've not seen him in over a day."

This really didn't seem like the sort of thing Faith could help with. Or wanted to help with. People went missing all the time, for all sorts of reasons. Usually wasn't anything supernatural about it. But something had gotten Lily talking now. When you were out on the street, when nobody wanted to talk to you, even a little bit of attention counted for a lot.

"I've been asking around." Faith isn't sure if Lily sounds eager or just desperate. "I heard that a couple of people saw him hanging around outside one of the shelters near here. Family Home, they call it. Maybe we could start-"

"You sure he didn't just run off?" Faith asks bluntly. She really wasn't sure she liked the sound of that _we_.

Lily looks shocked, either at being interrupted or by the question itself. Once you got used to being alone, you started to forget that other people wanted to talk too.

"Rickie wouldn't just leave me," she says, sounding painfully earnest. "We're in love."

Faith doesn't bother to hide her scepticism at that.

People said they were in love all the time. Usually lying to themselves, if not to anyone else. Most of the time people talked about being in love they were just finding a pretty label for some crude mix of hormones and instinct and self-interest. And even when they weren't fooling themselves, what did that matter? Being in love didn't stop people from hurting you, whether they meant to or not. Being in love didn't stop people leaving.

Faith doesn't say any of that out loud. She doesn't need to. Lily seems to get the message all the same from the expression on her face.

"Fine, then," she says, her sudden resolve surprising Faith again. "If you won't help me, I'll just find him myself. That was the plan anyway. Nobody's ever looked out for me but Rickie."

Faith watches her go, a little uneasily. She's pretty sure this Rickie guy has just bailed, whatever Lily might have said. Decided his chances were better on his own, or found some other girl. That isn't the sort of drama she wants any part in.

But if Lily's squeeze really had got into some sort of trouble, and Lily went blundering in after him, maybe she was going to get hurt. Maybe worse than hurt. And since Faith could have tried harder to stop her, maybe it would be on Faith if that happened. She wasn't sure how she felt about that.

 _What the hell,_ she tells herself. _I've got an hour to kill anyway_.

* * *

Trailing Lily is pretty simple. She doesn't hurry, and she doesn't seem to care if anybody is following behind her.

Lily doesn't walk through the city like somebody who'd grown up in one. Faith guesses she's been here for a while: weeks, months, maybe even a couple of years. But she hadn't been here as a child: Faith would be willing to put money on that.

A few blocks later, Lily reaches the place she was heading for. _Family Home_ , the sign above the door reads. Sure doesn't look like much of a home to Faith. These places never do.

There are a couple of guys waiting at the door. Security, it looks like, though they aren't wearing any sort of uniform. They seem reluctant to let Lily in at first, but she must have dropped the right name or said the right password, as after a brief conversation they suddenly seem to change their minds. Lily slips inside, and the two guys - the two guards, Faith assumes - move back into their posts.

Faith doesn't think she could talk her way in after her. That's not exactly her style. She could fight her way in for sure: it didn't look like these guys are even armed. But maybe the situation calls for a bit more subtlety. And as luck would have it, Faith knows a little about breaking and entering.

It doesn't take her long to find another way inside.

There's a fire escape in the alley next to the building, and the window on the third floor isn't locked. At least, not locked in any serious way. After no time at all she's in, the window gaping open behind her. The upstairs room behind the window is empty and dark and the floor is thick with undisturbed dust. It didn't seem as if anybody has come up here in a long time.

She can hear Lily's voice coming up from one of the rooms below. She seems to be in the middle of a conversation.

"You've seen Rickie?"

The kid sounds painfully eager: happy and excited in a way that suggests she hadn't been as sure of Rickie's intentions as she'd claimed to be. Faith uses the voice to orient herself, creeping forward through the dark room in search of a way downstairs.

"Oh, sure. Rickie's with us now."

Well, that isn't a trustworthy voice. Faith doesn't recognise it, but she's heard plenty of guys that sound like that. Confidence tricksters, loan sharks, other petty criminals. Guys who'd tell you whatever you wanted to hear if it meant you'd do what they wanted. Who'd stop playing nice the second you weren't any more use to them.

It takes her a few minutes to find her way downstairs, picking her way carefully though the dark. None of the other upstairs rooms are occupied either, and none of the lights are working. This whole place feels more like a shell than a real building. This isn't a place where people live. _But isn't this meant to be some sort of shelter?_

Something definitely isn't right here.

Faith is halfway down a flight of stairs before she hears anything else.

"-wash away the past. Go ahead."

This is the same untrustworthy voice from before. He sounds more confident now, more assertive. Like he's pretty close to not needing to pretend to be friendly anymore. Faith pads as quietly as she can through the hallways. The voices are coming from the room straight ahead.

"I've changed my mind," she hears Lily say nervously. "I don't want to go in there."

Turning back doesn't seem to have been an option, since the next thing Faith hears is the sound of a struggle. Not a long one. Sounds like the time for playing nice is over.

"Wait, let go of me!" Lily cries out. A part of Faith wonders why she bothers - who else she expects to hear. It's not just vamps who aren't interested in what other people have to say.

A different part of Faith figures this is a good time to make her entrance.

"Hey, pal," she says, stepping out of the shadows. "The lady asked you to back off."

There are three of them, she sees, not counting Lily. Three men: humans, as far as she can tell. Middle-aged, kind of bland looking. The sort of painfully average faces you'd barely remember shortly after you'd seen them. One of them is dressed in ordinary clothes, but the other two are wearing some sort of robes.

Those robes rings all sorts of alarm bells: Diana's warned her about the demon worshiping cults that can be found all over the country. Secret societies and fraternities, political leaders and businessmen. All looking to get more power by offering to do some demon's dirty work. And sure, vampires are monsters, but these cultist types sound seriously creepy.

The one dressed more normally has Lily by the shoulders, holding her in place next to a large pool in the middle of the room.

Faith is pretty sure this is the smooth talker she'd heard earlier, even before he opens his mouth and confirms it. He's saying something pompous and self-important, some bluster about private property and holy rituals. Faith doesn't pay it any attention. People like him always have an excuse.

"Do you really want-"

She doesn't wait for him to finish. While he'd been talking, she'd been moving forward, and now mid-question she catches him square in the face with a left hook. She pulls her punch a bit at the last minute, since she isn't trying to kill the guy. She _is_ trying to knock him down though, so it's kind of irritating that he manages to stay on his feet. Irritating and a little surprising; the guy hadn't honestly looked that tough.

When she hits him again - harder, this time - his face … breaks open? _No,_ she realises. _It's a mask. This guy ain't human._ The true face revealed behind the mask is red-eyed and scaled; the mouth below it filled with sharp inhuman teeth. This is a demon.

Now she's on more familiar territory.

Freed from the demon's grasp, Lily scrambles away, towards one of the corners, away from the pool of - ... _water? Maybe? -_ that the guy had been trying to make her step into. Faith has to figure that that was a smart choice. The liquid in the pool looks wrong, to her. Dark and oily and somehow almost alive.

Meanwhile Faith has the attention of the other three. And judging by the other two's lack of surprise at their friend's true face, the smart money had to be that they're demons too.

One of them's armed with some sort of spear or ax. Maybe a halberd, Faith thinks absently. Diana would have known. Faith has always been a lot better at the practical side of things than the theory. Anyway, he has some sort of weapon. And that's fine by her, since it means that a few seconds later - after stepping within his reach, grabbing his flailing arm, and twisting it hard, like _this_ \- she's the one with the weapon. Whatever it's called.

Then there isn't time to to think for a while. All three of them rush her at once. She blocks, parries, counter-attacks. These guys are strong, sure - maybe as stong as her, although she isn't sure of that - but she's faster. She's better.

After a few seconds of desperate fighting, Faith finds herself up against the guy she'd hit first, the one she had pegged as the leader. She's gotten away from the other two, but now her back is to the same pool he'd been trying to get Lily to climb into. Faith guesses he's trying to get her to fall into it too. She doesn't think she wants to let him do that.

But the demon seems intent on pushing her backwards, fighting against her for possession of her weapon. So she lets him have it: loosening her grip while flipping herself up over his head and behind him. Without her in front of him anymore, the demon staggers forward, almost stepping into the water. Then she kicks him as hard as she can in the back, and he takes another step.

For a second, the demon wobbles on the edge of the pool, arms flailing at his sides.

Then something in the water seems to burst up into the air and drag him back down under. Faith doesn't get a good look at what it is: it's almost as if the pool itself had reached up to claim him. And for all that he struggles, once he disappears from view the dark surface is suddenly and unnaturally still. _Well, okay,_ Faith thinks uneasily. _Let's not go anywhere near that_.

That leaves the pair wearing the robes. And two against one isn't looking like great odds for them at this point. They fight as best as they can, but she can tell they know it isn't going to be enough. And they aren't wrong.

Once they're down - dead, or just unconscious, she isn't sure which - Faith drags them over to the pool, one by one, and pushes them in as well, careful to keep out of reach herself. The dark water leaps up to grab them both, pulling them down … somewhere. Faith doesn't know exactly what it's doing to them: eating them or dragging them underground somewhere or whatever. But she hopes it hurts.

When it's over she turns to look for Lily, still huddled desperately in the far corner of the room.

"Don't think we're going to find your boy here," she says.

"No." Lily says, her face looking grim. "And if he did come here, I guess he's …"

She seems not to want to finish the thought. Faith can't blame her. She still hopes the guy had just snuck off somewhere, though she supposes that would be a shame for Lily for another reason.

"Who - what were those things?"

"Some kinda demons, I think," Faith shrugs. "Dead now, either way."

She hopes that they're dead, anyway. She isn't planning to wait around to see if they came back.

She'd expected Lily to be more shocked by that than she appears to be. It's not every day a demon tries to kill you. At least, it isn't supposed to be, not if you're not a Slayer. And for Lily it has just happened twice. But while the girl looks dismayed, she doesn't seemed surprised. Just like she hadn't been surprised by the vampire in the alley earlier.

"We came out here to get away from all of that," she says, voice so quiet as to be almost inaudible. "This place was supposed to be safe."

There's a story there, Faith guesses, but she doesn't reckon it's any of her business. And Diana will be getting worried soon, so … it's time to bail. At least with the demons dead she won't have to try sneaking out of the building.

Faith makes it halfway to the door before Lily calls her back.

"Wait," she says. "I should thank you. I think that … I think you just saved my life."

"It's no big deal," Faith says, feeling slightly awkward. People didn't normally thank you, in her experience. Scream and run, sure. Insist that the monsters you'd saved them from weren't possible, couldn't be real. But thank? Not so much. "Just part of the job, you know?"

"The job?" Lily asks, sounding slightly confused. "You do this sort of thing a lot? So, you're like a professional hero?"

_A hero? Huh._

She likes the sound of that.

* * *

Faith doesn't say much to Diana about what she'd been up to that night, after she'd makes it back to the hotel. Come to think of it, the Watcher probably hadn't wanted her wandering around town all night unsupervised.

"Went out looking for vamps," she says with a shrug, when Diana sees her over breakfast. "Only found one."

It's not a lie, not really. But she still isn't sure what she should say about the past night's events. Getting rid of demons was the sort of thing she was supposed to be doing, after all. She just wasn't expecting to find them posing as humans and setting up fake shelters to abduct homeless kids.

She's pretty sure all the other people who'd ever walked into the Family Home had ended up at the bottom of that strange pool. All the rooms upstairs, that should have contained beds or matresses, had been as empty and unused as the one she'd broken into. And they'd found a safe in one of the back rooms on the lower floor which - when Faith had broken it open - had turned out to be full of a sad collection of personal items and cherished-but-cheap belongings that must have been taken from kids like Rickie.

They'd found some cash, too, which Faith had let Lily hang onto. Call it compensation, or something. It wasn't like Faith needed the money.

She didn't think Diana would disapprove, exactly. But she thought the Watcher would have been weird about letting Lily go back onto the streets. Would have insisted they go out of their way to find somewhere for her to live, maybe invited her to tag along. Faith didn't think Lily would have wanted that.

(Or maybe Diana wouldn't have done that. That would have been worse. It would have meant that she only really cared about Faith because she was a Slayer.)

 _Whatever_ , she tells herself. _It's not as if I did anything wrong. I found demons, I slayed them. End of story._

Sunnydale was quite a drive away. Even though they'd left first thing in the morning, it's getting dark by the time they get into town.

Of course, they'd have got there sooner if Diana had let Faith drive: Diana's great, sure, but she drives like an old lady. But when Faith had volunteered to take over her Watcher had seemed pretty hung up on the whole lack-of-license thing. Faith had quietly added 'driving license' to her mental wish list (somewhere below 'rocket launcher': she had her priorities straight) and tried dozing off in the back, making up for the sleep she'd missed the night before.

They finally pull up outside a big house in a suburban street. Faith isn't sure who Diana is expecting to find here. Vampires and demons and all that mystical supernatural bullshit in LA or South Boston? Sure, that all made a warped kind of sense. Everyone knew those were dangerous places, even if they didn't realise just how dangerous. But out here? Even knowing they're close to a Hellmouth, it's hard to imagine that a place like this has to worry about anything more violent than a kids' soccer team, or a gang of high schoolers at Halloween, throwing eggs at houses. It feels more like the setting for some cheesy family sitcom than a place with real people with real problems.

 _Is this where Buffy's Watcher lives?_ Faith wonders. It's definitely not what she'd imagined.

Diana doesn't seem too sure of what to do next either. She parks the car, pulls out an address book, flicks through it carefully like she's double-checking something. She shoots a look at Faith, as if she's going to speak, but then seems to change her mind. From the set of her shoulders, Faith thinks Diana is bracing herself for bad news. But she doesn't seem to want Faith to come with her to hear it.

So Faith stays in the car, engine still idling, while Diana crosses over the street, heading for one of those big houses. Diana knocks, and a few moments later the door's opened by a short blonde girl, who looks up at her warily without speaking.

Even waiting this far back, Faith's heightened hearing can pick up their conversation.

"Miss Summers?" Diana says. "I'm Diana Dormer. Your new Watcher. May I come in?"


End file.
